As you might imagine, we travel on a budget. Seattle is quite a ways away from Colorado, and also: EXPENSIVE. So, most of our traveling moneys were spent on fuel to get there and back. To save money on lodging, we picked up a Roomsaver coupon magazine at the visitor center of each state we had to stay the night in- picked what looked like the best deal, and walked in the night of, to book a room. (Not to say that this method of getting a hotel room doesn’t have it’s disadvantages.) The best deal we got was a Doubletree hotel room for $55 in Boise!
After three days of driving around and exploring the Seattle area, we were, well… a little bored, but lacked the funds to do any of the touristy stuff (sidenote: the Seattle Art Museum was having a Picasso exhibit! That would have been so neat to go see… but, too expensive, and yeah- KIDS.) So, after a slightly heated discussion with my husband about his well founded, but slightly annoying reluctance to part with money for such things, I grabbed my trusty iPhone and looked up “Free things to do in Seattle.” Within 3 minutes I had a neat list on about.com and we had some Options. Phew! Day=saved. So we chose to go to the Arboretum, which ended up being one of the best things we did on the trip. We got loads of gorgeous pictures, the kids were able to run free without us having to worry about them getting run over by a car or disappearing behind a crowd of people, and we got a good workout. I totally recommend if you ever find yourself in Seattle and needing something to do on the cheap that is kid friendly.

A Canopy of Leaves

A Resting Spot

Taken under a shelter, this photo was Beau’s own idea.

It’s hard to see, but Beau has a little buddy in this picture, sitting on his left shoulder is a wee daddy-long-legs. Don’t worry, we brushed him off as soon as we spotted him. I’m just thankful it wasn’t one of the gnarly garden spiders we saw EVERYWHERE when we were in Seattle.

Enjoying the sights…

Hill Climb

Me and My Passenger
I was so glad I brought along my Moby wrap for this trip. It came in very handy. Rory was quite content to be in it (as long as we were moving) and I was glad for a little extra “help” in containing the squirmy baby.

As always, there are more pictures on my Flickr site if you feel so inclined to look… until then…

So… I’m about a third of the way through with uploading and editing, tagging and organizing all our fall vacation photos. It’s going to take me some time, so I thought I’d put one pic up for you…

Yes… yes, we did indeed go to Forks, WA… land of the vampires and werewolves where it is permanently Twilight…
We didn’t originally set out to go there… it just kind of happened. We had decided to take the ferry on our last morning in Seattle, and once over on the side of the Olympic Penisula, decided to keep driving. We ended up staying the night there, and giggled at the novelty of the town. Oddly enough, even though we got there at about sunset, the sun was indeed shining that day. But the next morning when we got up it was dark and drizzly…

Well… I’ve managed to put up my menu three weeks in a row. Boring, I know… Sorry, life has just been super busy, and overwhelmingly full lately. I haven’t had much time to document, though I’ve had many things to document. I can’t promise any time frame, but I’m working on it!

Monday: Kevin surprised us and took as out to eat- Family Night at Johnny Carino’s which turned out to be a pretty good deal. Our bill was $32 including a tip. I think we could actually do it for about $10 less next time, as we still have a full meal leftover. Lunch!